Cover Story

A Splash of Marilyn

As the 50th anniversary of her death approaches, Lawrence Schiller, in an adaptation from his memoir of those sessions, recalls Monroe’s mix of vulnerability and cold calculation as she guided his camera toward the ultimate revelation—breathtaking nude shots, some unseen till now—and their tense encounter the day before she died.

When I pulled into the Twentieth Century Fox Studios parking lot in Los Angeles in my station wagon in April 1960, I kept telling myself that this was just another assignment, just another pretty girl that I was going to photograph. In fact, she was anything but.

In 1956, when I was a college photographer, I had seen her angelic face on the cover of Time. After that, as I began to make my way in photojournalism, I got assignments to shoot Jimmy Stewart and Lee Remick in Anatomy of a Murder and the dancer Julie Newmar in Li’l Abner, yet it had never even occurred to me that I might get a chance to photograph the star who was every man’s—and woman’s—fantasy. And now, four years later, Look magazine had hired me to do just that. In a few minutes, I’d be meeting the Marilyn Monroe, face-to-face on the set of Let’s Make Love.

The studio publicist walked me to one of the many soundstages; this wasn’t the first time I’d seen large trucks containing recording equipment parked outside and a red light flashing in front of the entrance, indicating that filming was in progress. We waited a few seconds, and the light went off. Then the publicist led the way through the heavy soundproof doors. Inside, large arc lights and dolly tracks were being moved from one side of the stage to another.

Walking through the commotion, we arrived at a dressing room in the back. I have to admit I was excited, but I tried not to show it. Somewhere in the distance I could hear music and the sound of someone singing. Then, suddenly, the music stopped and Marilyn simply appeared. She was wearing a black leotard and sheer black stockings, her face as soft as a silk bedsheet, yet her expression was saying: Unapproachable.

She passed by me and started walking up the dressing-room stairs.

“This is Larry,” the publicist said. “He’s with Look magazine. He’ll be around for a few days.”

Marilyn stopped, turned toward me, and took a step down. Unexpectedly, her eyes lit up and she smiled.

“Hi, Larry from Look. I’m Marilyn.”

“And I’m the Big Bad Wolf,” I replied. I had no idea where that came from, and that made me even more nervous than I already was. I stuck my hand out to shake hers, and the three cameras dangling from my neck banged into one another.

Marilyn giggled. “You look a bit young to be so bad.”

“I’m 23,” I managed to answer, “but I’ve been shooting since I was about 15.” It did no good to tell myself that she was just 33. She was Marilyn Monroe and I was there to photograph her.

“Twenty-three? I made The Asphalt Jungle when I was 23,” she said, almost nostalgically.

Then she walked up the last two steps and leaned against the green door of her dressing room. “Come on in, Mr. Wolf,” she said in her soft voice. I’d thought that this was just her movie voice, but it seemed that it was actually the way she talked.

Taking one of my cameras from around my neck, I followed behind her. Once I was at the door, I did what I was there to do: as soon as she sat down in front of her large makeup mirror, I started shooting. I had gotten off only a few shots when Marilyn’s hairdresser, Agnes, appeared and began combing her out.

Marilyn, who had final photo approval of my images—an arrangement that is rather rare in modern-day Hollywood—saw me in the mirror and, without turning around, said, “That’s not the best angle for me. If you go over there”—tilting her head slightly, indicating a spot to the left—“the light will be better.”

I moved to where she suggested and at that moment she turned her head halfway in my direction. Looking over her left shoulder, she flashed a coy smile that told me all I needed to know about Marilyn Monroe: she knew who she was, she knew who I was, and she knew what to do. What’s more, she understood light.

As I lifted the Nikon with the 105-mm. telephoto lens, Marilyn smiled at me, and I pressed the shutter. Immediately, I realized I had the shot. In fact, Marilyn had shown me what other photographers who had shot her knew: that when she turned herself on to the camera, the photographer didn’t have to be more than a mechanic; it was almost as if she were both the shooter and the subject.

Before I moved to find another angle, she faced the mirror and continued. “There’s something different about you,” she said while Agnes kept on combing.

I was surprised that she wanted to talk about me. “My smile?,” I said.

“No,” she said.

Marilyn seemed to be looking me over. “It’s your eye,” she said suddenly. “You didn’t close your left eye when you were shooting.”

I’d been photographing people up close for nearly a decade, from the governor of California to pretty girls, to great athletes, and no one had ever noticed that before or said anything to me about it.

“That’s because I’m nearly blind in that eye,” I said.

The look on her face changed from curiosity to concern. “Was it an accident?” she asked.

As a photographer, I always tried to ingratiate myself, hoping that my subjects would feel comfortable as I photographed them. With Marilyn, I didn’t have to work too hard at it. Her question had given me an opening. I’d never before used my disability to cozy up to a subject, but now I jumped in, not knowing how deep the well was.

“I was seven and we lived in an apartment building in Brooklyn that had a garbage chute that my mother called a dumbwaiter—”

“I know what that is,” she said, interrupting, like a schoolgirl responding to a teacher’s explanation. “I lived in Brooklyn for a while with Arthur,” a reference to her current husband, playwright Arthur Miller.

I decided to continue my story, not knowing what else to do. “Outside each apartment there was a little door that opened onto a shaft—that’s where we threw away our garbage.” Marilyn was silent, listening. “My mother had asked me to throw something out, and I went into the hallway, opened the door, and stuck my head inside out of curiosity. At that exact moment, someone on a floor above was throwing an umbrella down the shaft. It hit me in my eye. The next thing I knew, my mother was screaming and my uncle was carrying me. I didn’t lose the eye, but I did lose most of my sight.”

Marilyn’s manner seemed to shift. Her lips opened, and I saw how perfect her teeth were. Her eyes became warmer and watery, as if what I was describing gave her comfort. It was an odd reaction, and I didn’t understand it. It would be many years before I came to realize that some questions in life simply have no answers.

“Oh, my God,” she said, her voice an octave lower than what it had been a minute earlier. “That’s such a tragic story!”

“It isn’t so bad,” I said. “I don’t know anything other than the sight I have. Maybe I see things the way the camera does—flat. It has never inhibited me.”

“But it must have changed you,” she said. “Something like that—it changes you.”

“Well,” I replied, “it changed the way my parents saw me. They were always worried that I might lose my other eye.”

At that moment the publicist knocked on the dressing-room door to tell me that Marilyn was about to leave for the day and that I could return tomorrow to continue my shooting.

“O.K.,” I said. And I turned to Marilyn. “See you tomorrow.”

“Yes, tomorrow,” she said, “Mr. Wolf.”

Blonde Ambition

Eager to begin photographing Marilyn, I got to the set early the next day only to find everyone standing around and waiting. Marilyn was in her dressing room, the door closed. One hour passed. Two. Three. I soon discovered that she followed her own clock. As I would learn, she considered herself underpaid and had been battling the executives at Fox for years. The gossip was that she thought the studio didn’t respect her talent as an actress. I had read that for Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, which she’d made in 1953, Jane Russell had been paid $200,000 while Marilyn, the blonde referred to in the title of the movie, had earned all of $1,250 per week—about $15,000—for the entire picture.

Also on the set that morning was Marilyn’s co-star Yves Montand. Like everyone else, he was waiting for her, too. Every so often he would come out of his dressing room to smoke a cigarette, and John Bryson, a Life photographer and an idol of mine, would appear and photograph him. Bryson, with his great mustache and six-foot-two-inch frame, projected tremendous confidence as he went about his work.

Group Amnesia

In those days, magazine photographers were very important to the studios. Our pictures landed on the covers of Life, Look, Paris Match, the London Sunday Times Magazine, and Stern and helped promote the studios’ movies around the world. Over the years, Marilyn had been photographed by some of the greats: Eve Arnold, Philippe Halsman, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Richard Avedon, Arnold Newman, and Milton Greene. And I have to admit that at 23 my ambition was to one day have a photograph on the cover of Life, which was what Bryson was on the set to do. So while everyone waited around on the soundstage, I walked over to Marilyn’s dressing room, hoping to catch her accidentally on purpose when she finally decided it was time to appear.

It was midafternoon, and, wearing a stunning white dress, Marilyn came into sight, standing just inside the doorway of her dressing room, her face as fresh as the morning. I lifted my camera, my left eye wide open. When she reached the last step, she saw me, smiled, and turned on her famous wiggle walk, placing one foot almost directly in front of the other. I walked backward taking her picture.

“You’d better watch out,” she warned. “You’re gonna fall over something.” Right after she said that, I stumbled a little and she laughed.

“I told you—you’ve gotta watch your back.” And then she added, “Because no one else will.”

Just then Yves Montand came by to discuss the upcoming scene with Marilyn. As I reached for a camera with a different lens, Marilyn asked, “You want us to walk toward you?”

“That would be great,” I replied.

I was getting the shots I needed, and I was also wondering why Marilyn was being so friendly. Maybe it was because of that story about my accident. Later I would learn that her own youth was fraught with misery, that she claimed to have been abused as a child. Whatever her reason, back in 1960 she was surprisingly warm and open with me.

Everyone on the set seemed relieved now that Marilyn had finally appeared. They all reacted as if they had had amnesia. For hours they had hated waiting, waiting, and waiting. And yet when the cause of their anxiety strode in front of the cameras, smiling at everyone, making no apologies, everything was forgiven.

It took her hours to psych herself up for each scene, but when she was ready to be the character the role demanded, there was no denying her power. Montand was handsome, surely, but nobody watched him in their scenes together. Every eye was focused on Marilyn.

Don’t Bother to Knock

On my third and last day, I arrived at 8:30 A.M. Marilyn was scheduled to be on set by 9:30, but when she hadn’t appeared by noon, the crew broke for lunch. I decided to just knock on her dressing-room door. She didn’t seem to mind my being around, and I’d seen Bryson do it with Montand.

“This lousy movie! Fucking studio!,” I heard from behind the door. The moment didn’t seem quite right for me to make a move, and I turned to leave, but just then the door opened. Whitey Snyder, Marilyn’s makeup man, on his way out of her dressing room, looked at me, not knowing why I was knocking.

As I entered, I could feel the tension. There was nowhere to sit except on the floor, in the corner, so that’s where I settled.

“I’m just not ready,” Marilyn said, looking at herself in the mirror.

“I don’t know if it matters, because everyone’s gone to lunch,” I replied, not knowing if she was talking to me or to herself.

“Are you hungry?” she asked. “All I have is champagne, but I can send my driver to get some food.”

“No, I’m fine. I need to lose weight.”

“Why? You’re not an actor,” she said a bit playfully.

“My wife’s beginning to notice,” I replied.

“You’re married?” she said. “How nice.”

“Just,” I said. “For about 10 weeks.”

“First time?” she asked.

“And last, I hope.”

“Be careful what you hope for. You never know how things will turn out.”

She was speaking from experience. Later, I would come to measure her life by the men who had shared it with her: her agent Johnny Hyde, Marlon Brando, Joe DiMaggio, Frank Sinatra, Arthur Miller.

“Aren’t you here to take some pictures?”

Then she turned toward me, and I immediately picked up my camera and started snapping. I noticed instantly how quickly she changed, and how beautiful she looked through the lens.

“That’s great,” I said. “That’s terrific.” I was babbling.

“How often do you lie?” she asked suddenly, cutting me off.

“I don’t understand,” I said, searching for something more intelligent to say, something that would speak to her concerns, though I didn’t know what they were. “I used to lie about my age when I was 16,” I finally said.

“What was wrong with being 16?”

Relieved that she wasn’t mad at me, I decided to tell her a little more about myself. “My photographs were always being rejected by magazines,” I told her. “I would send my story ideas to picture editors and they always turned me down. I got so many rejections that I used to pin the letters up on the bathroom wall and sit on the toilet and read them. Eventually I came to the conclusion that they were rejecting me because of my age, not my work. I guess they figured that a 16-year-old couldn’t deliver the goods.”

“I could tell you all about rejection,” Marilyn said. “Sometimes I feel my whole life has been one big rejection.”

“But look at you now,” I said.

“Exactly,” she replied evenly. “Look at me now.” Her remark hung in the air.

“I don’t understand!,” I blurted out. I knew that I was betraying my ignorance or my youth, but I really didn’t understand, and I wanted to. “You’re a star!,” I continued. “Your face is on magazine covers all over the world! Everyone knows Marilyn Monroe!”

She didn’t say anything for a while. When she did, her voice wasn’t exactly soft.

Just then the door opened, and Whitey came in with her food. But Marilyn wasn’t interested in eating. “So,” she said, circling back, “you lied about your age to get some work.”

“Yeah, and it worked,” I said. “That got me started, and before long I was getting published—a little in Life, but mostly in Paris Match and the sports magazines.” Marilyn began to pick at her food—eating a strawberry, a piece of cantaloupe, a slice of orange. She was clearly not listening, but I continued to rattle on, telling her about having shot some nude photos in the basement of the home of the president of what was then Pepperdine College, which I had attended. “And then I photographed these baton twirlers in shorts for The Saturday Evening Post. The school got mad at me because it gave the wrong impression of Pepperdine, which was supposed to have a religious environment.”

Finally, I had caught her attention.

“Nudes in the basement … how naughty,” she remarked sarcastically.

“In those days, I was trying to get into Playboy, doing test shots. Eventually it paid off. Since then I’ve shot three Playmates for them. And I got paid $1,000 for each centerfold.”

Then I found myself asking her about her famous nude calendar. “How much did they pay you for that?”

“Nothing,” she replied. She didn’t seem to mind answering my question. “They didn’t pay me anything for that first one, which Playboy used as a Playmate.” She admitted that she’d never even met the magazine’s publisher, Hugh Hefner.

“I have the best Hefner story,” I interrupted. “You know how he’s supposed to have made it with all those Playmates? Well, after I shot my first two for him, he called me and said he had dinner with this fantastic chick, and he went on about how well endowed she was, and how she had the perfect face and body to be a Playmate. Since Playboy is all about boobs, I figured she must be a knockout, so I made arrangements to shoot her. I went to the Harold Lloyd estate, just north of Sunset, and—get this—as soon as she undresses, I see that she’s flat-chested.”

Marilyn was laughing by then. “So what did you do?”

“I shot her from behind.”

“So you made a mountain out of a molehill,” she said, laughing, and then added, “I always have a full-length mirror next to the camera when I’m doing publicity stills. That way, I know how I look.”

Her remark came out of nowhere, and I found myself asking, “So, do you pose for the photographer or for the mirror?”

“The mirror,” she replied without hesitating. “I can always find Marilyn in the mirror.”

The photos I took during my three days on the set were black-and-white. They were journalistic pictures, not studio portraits. The idea was to capture Marilyn at ease. While I was shooting, she never worried about whether I was focusing on her rear end or whether I was aiming too high or low—she knew she’d be able to reject the ones she didn’t like.

Once I got the proof sheets back from the lab, I had no trouble returning to the set to see her. When it came to looking at photographs of herself, Marilyn was all business. I gave her the small contact sheets and a magnifying glass.

Marilyn didn’t have a preconceived idea of how she wanted to be seen by the public. All she wanted was to make sure that her face or body didn’t appear blemished in some way: a line here or a wrinkle there. She was interested in the total image; if the whole picture worked, Marilyn was happy.

At the bottom of one of my proof sheets she wrote with a red marker: “Explain or remove sweat pads.” When I looked at the entire image, not just her face, I noticed a tissue under her right arm that she kept to catch the perspiration on her body. She wanted the tissue retouched out, just in case this shot was going to be published without a caption explaining that she was perspiring under the hot lights while rehearsing.

“You see what I’m saying?” she asked.

“Yes, of course,” I answered, though it would be years before I really understood what she’d been concerned about.

Dangerous Years

Let’s Make Love, as it turned out, would die at the box office. The press reported that Marilyn had suffered a third miscarriage, and her next picture, The Misfits, with a dream cast of Clark Gable, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach, got off track, in part because John Huston, who directed it, was at a loss trying to get Marilyn to work on time. Her eyes didn’t focus, and she eventually had to return to Los Angeles for hospital rest. Filming in Nevada was shut down for 10 days.

Shortly after the movie was finished, Gable died, and Marilyn was unfairly blamed for his death—they said she had kept him waiting too many hours in the desert sun. Marilyn’s intermittent affair with Sinatra, which followed, didn’t seem to solve any of her emotional problems. Against her will, she spent three days in a padded room at the Payne Whitney psychiatric clinic, in New York. After being rescued from there by Joe DiMaggio, she had gallstone surgery. At the same time, she suffered from chronic indigestion and debilitating insomnia. Back in California, she found a new psychoanalyst, Dr. Ralph Greenson, who saw her five times a week and sometimes more. She also bought her first house. It was in Brentwood, between Beverly Hills and the Pacific Palisades. And by 1962 she had trimmed down 20 pounds to make George Cukor’s Something’s Got to Give for Fox, to which she was still under contract.

That May, Paris Match assigned me to photograph Marilyn to promote the film in which she would co-star with Dean Martin and Wally Cox. I obtained a copy of the script to get some idea of the story—and to anticipate what scenes might work best photographically. By then I had learned a lot more about the business. I understood the power of publicity, especially the appeal of picture-driven magazines such as Life and Paris Match. I’d become a much better businessman, maybe a little tough. I understood the value of exclusivity to a photographer. (I soon discovered that Jimmy Mitchell, the studio photographer, and Billy Woodfield, of Globe Photos, would also be covering the movie.) When I looked over the script, which contained numerous pages of revisions, it didn’t take me very long to find the one scene I was sure I wanted to cover: when Marilyn jumps into a swimming pool to seduce Dean Martin, who is looking down at her from a balcony. This scene would shoot for several days in May.

I introduced myself to Pat Newcomb, Marilyn’s personal press representative, who suggested that we set a time to meet to discuss the shooting schedule—at Marilyn’s new house, at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive. When I arrived I found the one-story Spanish-style home almost bare. There was a sizable pool and a guesthouse in the back. There was hardly any art on the walls and just a few pieces of furniture. Later I would learn that her barren bedroom contained only a mattress and two small tables.

Shot by Shot

Marilyn, wearing checked Capri pants, a white blouse, and very little makeup, looked almost ordinary that morning. Pat Newcomb was there, partially silhouetted against the window, a lean athletic look about her. Marilyn was preoccupied with loose tiles scattered on the living-room floor and jumped right into conversation with me. “Larry, let me borrow your one good eye.”

Pat looked puzzled by this remark, but I thought it was funny.

“What do you think of these?,” Marilyn asked, pointing to a couple of tiles. “I’m re-doing the kitchen.”

“Hi,” I said to her, and looked down at the tiles. “Nice to see you again.”

“You too, Larry.” Then Marilyn said something like “You get any badder since I last saw you?”

Again, I remember Pat Newcomb looking confused. One good eye? Badder?

“Quite a bit,” I said. I was pleased that she remembered our exchanges, but I knew that this wasn’t the time to talk about myself.

“So, whaddya think? Which color tiles should I get for the kitchen?”

“I like the blue,” I said.

“Nah,” she replied. “That’s swimming-pool color.”

In the living room, Marilyn got down to business. “I don’t think there should be a lot of photographers shooting me on this movie,” she said in her breathless voice. “Like the studio did on The Misfits.”

Then Pat continued on behalf of Marilyn. “I’m sure you and Paris Match can supply other foreign magazines with pictures.”

“I’ve seen Elliott Erwitt’s pictures.” I didn’t know what else to say.

“Elliott’s sweet,” Marilyn replied.

“I’ve seen Inge Morath’s pictures,” I continued. “She’s a pretty extraordinary photographer!” From Marilyn’s expression I could immediately tell that I’d made a mistake.

“Well,” Marilyn said, holding her breath for a beat, “she wound up marrying my ex-husband just a few months ago.” Then she changed the subject. “I’d like you to shoot me with Wally,” Marilyn said, meaning her co-star Wally Cox. “He’s so funny.”

“What I’d really like to shoot is—”

“Wait, let me guess,” she interrupted. “Splish-splash.”

“The pool sequence is sure to be published everywhere,” I said. “It’ll be just like Sam Shaw’s photo of you from The Seven Year Itch,” referring to the famous image of Marilyn standing over the subway grate with her white dress flying up in the air.

She mused for a while. “I’ve been thinking about this scene. I’ll have the bathing suit on when I jump in, but I’m thinking about coming out without it.”

Interrupting, Pat said to her, “You’re joking, aren’t you?”

Marilyn’s voice grew stronger. She was now staring at me intensely as she spoke. “Fox should start paying as much attention to me as they are paying to Elizabeth Taylor.” She was referring to the fact that, while Taylor was receiving a million dollars for Cleopatra, she was making only $100,000. Everyone knew the studio was getting a publicity bonanza from Taylor’s very public affair with her co-star, Richard Burton. Now it looked as if Marilyn wanted to show Fox that she could get the same kind of coverage.

“Larry,” she said, looking directly at me, “if I do come out of the pool with nothing on, I want your guarantee that when your pictures appear on the covers of magazines Elizabeth Taylor is not anywhere in the same issue.”

“Don’t be so cocky,” she replied, wiping the smile off my face. “Photographers can be easily replaced.”

“Happy Birthday, Mr. President”

I hung around the set, capturing Marilyn in a photojournalistic style—in her two dressing rooms, on the set, relaxing between takes. But she was perpetually late and on certain days didn’t appear at all. On Thursday, May 17, however, Marilyn showed up promptly and was finished with her scenes before noon. For a change, nobody had to wait for her. What they didn’t know was that actor Peter Lawford had come to the studio by helicopter to pick her up and take her to the airport. From there, they would fly to New York, where Marilyn had agreed to sing “Happy Birthday” to President John F. Kennedy at a Democratic Party fund-raiser at Madison Square Garden. Later, this would become an issue. Marilyn had informed Fox that she had been asked to do this, but the studio let her know that because the filming was already behind schedule they didn’t want her to leave and miss more days. Marilyn didn’t argue; she just went to New York to celebrate the president’s birthday. By then, there were rampant rumors that she was also having an affair with J.F.K. and, some believed, with his brother Bobby, the attorney general, as well, but that would always remain part of the mystery around her.

Like countless others, I watched news footage of her sexy, almost tipsy performance following Lawford’s introduction of her as “the late Marilyn Monroe,” making fun of her reputation for keeping everyone—and now even the president—waiting. That night she wore a skintight sequined dress, and her platinum-blond hair seemed to glow. And the way she whispered the song, pausing between each phrase, must have sent shivers up the president’s spine.

Some Like It Wet

Marilyn was en route to New York when Fox sent her attorneys a breach-of-contract letter. She was furious. She was convinced that this wasn’t about her movie but about the heavy, unexpected losses the studio was taking on Cleopatra. The studio seemed blind to the publicity she had generated for them with her appearance at the Garden. Instead, they were turning Marilyn’s Manhattan visit against her.

She flew back to L.A. on Sunday and was on the set the next day ready to work. Everyone could see that her director, George Cukor, acted coldly toward her; no doubt he’d been told what the studio was up to.

Pat Newcomb called two nights later to confirm that the swimming-pool scene would be shot the following day.

On a large soundstage, Fox had built the swimming-pool set. Dean Martin would be filmed on a balcony, looking down at Marilyn, who was to be in the water, frolicking, and thereby turning him on. The line in the script said she appeared nude; it didn’t say that she was going to be nude.

Cukor had positioned several cameras, knowing he would have to shoot at least six or seven setups. He’d need close-ups, long shots, and a high angle from Martin’s point of view on the balcony, which meant there’d be time between setups to take photographs. There was great anticipation, made only greater because Marilyn was, as usual, late. Cukor was miffed. He paced the set, fuming. When Marilyn finally emerged from her dressing room, she was wearing a blue terry-cloth bathrobe and a flesh-colored two-piece bathing suit underneath. Basically, it was a bra and panties. My heart started to race.

Marilyn jumped into the pool and dog-paddled around. The water had been heated to 90 degrees, making it like a warm bath. She floated on her back for a while. There was no dialogue; she gave a little giggle followed by a little laugh. Then she swam toward the side of the pool, lifted her head and shoulders out of the water, and peeked over the rim while keeping the rest of her body in the water. After a few more giggles, Marilyn lifted her right leg over the pool’s edge, still keeping the rest of her body hidden. I hit the shutter release on my camera several times, just before she playfully moved back toward the center of the pool.

Then, all of a sudden, Marilyn swam back up to the pool’s edge, and now she didn’t have the bra on, only her panties, which she had rolled up like a thong. She sat on the side of the pool posing for our cameras. She looked toward us, then away. She looked over her shoulder, directly into my camera lens. Immediately, I wondered when we were going to see it all. With two motorized Nikons around my neck, one for color and one for black-and-white—and with Marilyn about 20 feet away—I was working to get as many images on film as I could.

No one said a word. All eyes were trained on her.

Whitey Snyder moved in for a few seconds to ensure that her makeup didn’t run. Agnes came over and worked on her hair even though it was soaking wet. I was so fixated on Marilyn that I don’t remember even seeing Cukor’s camera operators or the other two still photographers, Billy Woodfield and Jimmy Mitchell, who were also chronicling the scene for the studio.

During a short break, she disappeared into her dressing room, then emerged in a blue bathrobe. She stood poolside and slipped off the robe, hiding her body as she slid into the water. A few moments later, when she raised herself from the pool, I could see that her panties were gone. She’d done it! And she was having a lot of fun. She was enjoying it!

For a few minutes, while the crew repositioned its cameras, Marilyn, instead of returning to her dressing room a third time, stayed and posed for the still cameras. Nobody had to ask her to turn right or turn left—she knew exactly what to do.

Marilyn was a photographer’s dream subject with her clothes on, and even more stunning with them off. Her wet skin glistened. Her eyes sparkled. Her smile was provocative. There was no hint of the woman who had been in trouble for most of her life. As I shot, I was sure that the pictures I was taking were going to be beautiful and unforgettable. The flow of her spine complemented her natural curves as the water reflected the lights, and the whole scene came alive.

Let’s Make a Deal

In all, I shot 16 rolls of 36-exposure Tri-X black-and-white and three rolls of high-speed Ektachrome, constantly adjusting my cameras, checking exposure and shutter speed, moving so that the key lights illuminated the contours of her body. The scene was repeated numerous times so that the director could capture it from every conceivable angle.

Cukor finished at around five in the afternoon and I immediately rushed to the phone. I called Roger Therond, then a rising editor of Paris Match. “Roger,” I shouted, “you won’t believe what happened. The first nudes of Marilyn Monroe in over 10 years. The pictures are going to blow your mind!”

“How soon can we get them?,” Therond said in his heavy French accent. “Should we fly a writer there?”

“No, no, you don’t need to. The pictures speak for themselves, Roger.” What I didn’t tell him was that Marilyn still had to approve them.

Then I approached photographer Billy Woodfield to make a deal with him. What was needed was a world exclusive. Neither of us would get any sort of payday if there were two sets of images on the market. Billy, after some soul-searching, agreed to our joining forces, then and there. In return, we’d split the take 50–50. What choice did either of us have?

The next morning I shot some more scenes on the set, but Marilyn was in a strange mood, so I kept my distance. When she finished filming with Wally Cox, she passed me on her way back to her dressing room and asked, “When do I see the pictures?”

She wasn’t smiling or being coy. What had happened between us the day before was business, and the business was self-promotion. It was clear she was fearful that the picture might run the risk of being closed down. As Marilyn was shooting, there was tremendous competition among other major films: The Miracle Worker, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Sweet Bird of Youth, Days of Wine and Roses, Birdman of Alcatraz, and To Kill a Mockingbird. Marilyn knew that her movie wasn’t going to get the notices that these other productions would receive unless she did something bold, and what better way to do that than to reveal herself in a manner that could not be ignored? She had done her part, and I’m sure she wanted to see if I could do mine. Why she seemed to trust me I still don’t know.

“Let’s Go Get Dom!”

The next morning, I took a set of proof sheets to Marilyn to review. As usual, she was sitting in the chair in front of her makeup mirror, wearing a white robe, when I entered her dressing room. Seeing me in the mirror, Marilyn swung around in her chair; her robe was slightly open, revealing that she wasn’t wearing underwear. I didn’t lift my camera. It just didn’t feel right.

As I handed her the proof sheets, she asked, “Where’s the color?”

“Being processed,” I said. “I’ll have them tomorrow.”

“I’ll be home,” she said. “I’ll see you there.”

Marilyn glanced at the black-and-whites. “Not bad,” she said, but then pointed to one image: “But not this one.” It was a shot in which the muscles in her legs were emphasized too much. After marking that frame she handed the proof sheet back to me. I could hardly believe it—only one edit!

“See you tomorrow,” Marilyn said suddenly. “I’ll give the rest back to you then.” She was kind of ushering me out, and I didn’t mind it at all. I couldn’t wait to pick up the color from the lab the next morning.

That Saturday, just after sunset, I proceeded to her house on a cul-de-sac off Carmelina—extremely pleased with the results and knowing I had several potential cover shots. Even so, I took a deep breath as I walked up to the door, which she answered herself.

“Here you go—let’s exchange,” she said, handing me the oversize envelope with the proofs. I gave her the one I was holding, with the strips of color. Still standing in the doorway, she pulled out one of the strips, held it up, then put it back in the envelope with the others and said, “Let’s go get Dom.”

Who is Dom?, I wondered. All I could think was that I was going to have to deal with someone new now, which was a wrinkle I hadn’t anticipated. Instead of asking me inside, however, she grabbed a cardigan and headed for her car. I think it was a T-Bird, but I don’t recall for sure. Marilyn motioned me in and drove us to Sunset, then headed east to the Strip. Near Schwab’s drugstore, where Lana Turner, according to legend, was discovered sipping an ice-cream soda at the counter, Marilyn parked the car under a streetlamp and told me to wait—she’d be right back. A few minutes later, she came out of Schwab’s holding a brown paper bag. Back in the car, instead of starting the engine, she reached into the bag and pulled out “Dom”—a bottle of Dom Pérignon champagne. She popped the cork like a wine steward, took a drink from the bottle, and said, “Pictures?”

This was not the time or the place—sitting in a car under a streetlamp. “Let’s not look at them now,” I protested. But Marilyn just took another swig, handed me the bottle, and said, “Let’s see.”

Reluctantly, I reached into the envelope in my lap and pulled out the film strips. At the same time, she reached into her purse and took out an Eastman Kodak loupe—a very good magnifying glass—and what looked like a pair of scissors. She held one strip up against the streetlight, and zip! She snipped an image in half. Then she took the bottle from me, knocked it back, handed it back again, and, zip, cut another shot in half.

“Larry, you’re not drinking,” she said.

“No, I’m not. I’m just scared that I may wind up with no color shots,” I replied. With nothing more intelligent to add, I said, “What kind of scissors are those?”

“They’re pinking shears,” she said.

“What are pinking shears?”

“You don’t know anything about women’s dresses, do you? When you hem a dress, you use these to cut the fabric.”

Now I decided to take a drink, but it didn’t go down smoothly, not while she had those pinking shears in her hand. I was lost—it was almost dark. I couldn’t see the pictures she was looking at. I wasn’t being consulted. On a few pictures, she zip-zipped twice! I was trying to figure out how many strips of color I could keep inside my envelope without showing her.

Finally, I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “You know what Yousuf Karsh said to Anna Magnani when he showed her his proofs from one of his shoots?,” I said. “He apologized for all the wrinkles in her face that his lighting had produced and said he’d retouch the photos. And I’ve heard Magnani said, ‘Don’t you dare take them out. I worked too hard for those wrinkles.’ ”

I had caught her attention. Marilyn looked at me for a couple of seconds and then she said, “Maybe if I had those types of wrinkles Fox would take me more seriously.”

“She does have an extraordinary face,” I said. I was hoping to divert her attention from those pinking shears.

“I met her once, when I won the Donatello Award for The Prince and the Showgirl. She hugged me for the cameras, and she called me a putana when she thought I wasn’t listening.”

“What’s a putana?”

“Look it up. It’s Italian.” Zip! Zip! Zip!

By the time Marilyn was through with her editing, she had cut about 70 of the approximately 108 color images. Seventy sounds like a lot, but 38 approved sounded even better. The next day I would throw away all the cut-up images, oblivious to their historical value. I was living in the present and not the future.

It was dark when we finished the champagne, and as we drove back to her house, she reminded me of our deal: she didn’t want to see Elizabeth Taylor in any of the magazines that her pictures were going to appear in.

The Dom had loosened her tongue, and she started talking about how badly Fox had treated her, how the executives had no respect for her or her talent, and how she’d really like to stick it to them. She was rambling on and my mind was wandering. “Are you here, Larry?”

“I’m not a champagne person,” I replied.

“How can anybody not like champagne?” she asked, laughing a little sarcastically.

Not responding to her question, I asked one of my own. “When did you start liking champagne?”

“Let’s see. I think when Norma Jeane got married she had a little,” Marilyn replied, referring to her given name.

After a pause Marilyn continued as she drove toward her home. “I never wanted to be Marilyn—it just happened. Marilyn’s like a veil I wear over Norma Jeane.”

When we got back to her house, she dropped me off at my car, said good night, and pulled away without looking back. I stood there wondering how she was going to spend the rest of the night.

Something’s Got to Give

Marilyn worked a few more days, spending her birthday, June 1, filming with Dean Martin and Wally Cox. The studio had calculated that of the 32 working days since the start of the shoot, in April, Marilyn had been available for only about 12. Peter Levathes, the head of Fox, reviewed the film in the can—40 minutes of Marilyn, in character—and didn’t think much of what he saw. There were moments of the Monroe magic, he thought, but not enough to warrant the studio’s continuing with her. The breach of contract would now be enforced, the picture would be shut down until they found a replacement for Marilyn, and the cast would be so informed.

On June 8, 1962—one week after her 36th birthday—Marilyn was fired from Something’s Got to Give. Columnist Sheilah Graham broke the story, quoting the film’s producer, Henry Weinstein: “The studio does not want her anymore. Every time she says she is ill and we have to close down the picture, 104 persons lose a day’s pay Marilyn’s absence has cost the studio more than half a million dollars.” The next day, Fox sued Marilyn to recover its damages.

The film was in deep freeze. But our photographs would surely be a sensation on their own. The studio cooperated with Billy and me, holding back their photographer’s images. We would later give Jimmy Mitchell $10,000, believing it was only fair to share some of our projected income with him. For our part, we stood to receive more than $65,000 for worldwide sales—not including the fee from my separate negotiation with Life. After commissions and expenses from just the initial sales, Billy and I expected to clear $30,000 each—perhaps the biggest payday for any photographer up to that time (with the exception of David Douglas Duncan’s famous pictures of Pablo Picasso).

Eight days later, there was Marilyn in a blue robe on the cover of Life. And there she was that same week, in various states of dress and undress, on the covers of the most important foreign magazines.

Once the magazines appeared, I went to see Marilyn at home; the issue of Life was on her coffee table. “Just what you said it would be,” she remarked, on greeting me.

“Well, now I have money for a down payment, so I can look for a house.” Then I said, smiling, “See what tits ’n’ ass can do?”

“That’s how I got my house and swimming pool,” Marilyn said, laughing. “There isn’t anybody that looks like me without clothes on.”

“I’m going to have a little wooden sign made,” I continued. “It’s gonna say, THE HOUSE THAT MARILYN BOUGHT. I’m going to hang it over the front door.” That’s when she told me how happy she was to be able to help do something positive for someone.

I also told Marilyn that my wife, Judi, and I were thinking of having another child. When I said that, Marilyn seemed to disappear inside of herself, almost as if she had to tell me something that scared her.

“I’ve always wanted a baby,” she said in a voice so quiet that it wasn’t more than a whisper. I didn’t know what to say. She seemed not to be talking to me. It was almost as if she were talking to her shrink.

“Having a child,” she continued. “That’s always been my biggest fear. I want a child and I fear a child.” She paused and continued. “Whenever it came close, my body said no and I lost the baby.” I remember her talking about being afraid that she’d wind up like her mother, who had been in and out of mental institutions her whole life. And I could see how that frightened her.

And then, all at once, Marilyn pulled herself together. She looked at the cover of Life, smiled, and, her voice returning to its normal tone, said, “The shape I’m in, I’ll have a child.” I took the clue and moved on to business.

When I’d originally shown Marilyn the contact sheets, I had purposely left out two strips of pictures that revealed more body because I was afraid she would kill them. In fact, in those days no general-interest magazine would have shown the images we had; they were simply too revealing for the era. But Billy and I knew that Playboy would jump at the opportunity to publish them.

And now that Marilyn was talking about how good she looked in the nude, I thought it was an opportune time to bring up Playboy.

“Marilyn,” I started, “I was going through my camera bag and found a roll of film that wasn’t developed. When I developed them, I discovered that some images were a bit more risqué than the others.” And then I took a deep breath and continued: “I’m pretty sure Playboy would love to publish these. No question Hefner will agree to the same conditions we got everywhere in the world.”

Marilyn was quiet for a minute. She seemed a little upset. “Where are they?”

“In my car.”

“Well, go get them.”

I ran out to my car to get the enlarged proof sheet. Back in the house, I held my breath as she looked at the images. She took her time, looking at her curvaceous, incredible body. “Don’t like this one,” she said, pointing. “This one either. But this one is O.K. Go.”

Marilyn approved just the one new image. It was a full-body shot taken from the side. In it, she was about to put on her bathrobe, and her full left breast and nipple were showing. That was all I needed. Hefner would have something exclusive. And Marilyn would get what she wanted, too: the use of her looks, her body, her ability to generate publicity, as a weapon against the studio.

When I reached Hefner by phone a day later, he said he’d seen Life, so I told him about the additional frames, noting that Marilyn had approved the shots. The negotiations went smoothly. We offered him that one nude shot exclusively and gave him non-exclusive access to everything else that Billy and I had distributed. Hefner agreed to pay us our asking price of $25,000—the most money Playboy had ever paid for a photograph. We were ecstatic. The house I wanted was within reach.

A Saturday Snub

On Saturday, August 4, I drove to Brentwood at around nine A.M., intent on closing the Playboy deal, which had been dragging on for two months. I just needed Marilyn to approve Hefner’s new idea of having her pose for the front and back covers of the magazine.

Marilyn was in the front yard, casually dressed, in slacks. As I got out of the car, she stood up and looked as if she was expecting someone else. Her hair was uncombed and loose, her face without makeup. You’d never know it was Marilyn Monroe. She didn’t look like any of the pictures that I had taken.

“I didn’t know you were going to come by,” she said. She wasn’t very friendly and she seemed impatient.

“I just wanted to drop these off for you to see,” I said, handing her an envelope with a few prints and more foreign magazines with cover shots of her. “I’m taking Judi and the baby to Palm Springs for the weekend, but when Pat called last night to say you were no longer interested in doing Playboy, I just wanted to hear it direct from you.”

“Pat wasn’t authorized to make that call,” she said, and I saw that she was upset. It was the first time I felt anger coming from her.

“Should I discuss this with Pat on Monday?”

“It’s still about nudity. Is that all I’m good for?” she replied, but I didn’t think she was looking for an answer. “I’d like to show that I can get publicity without using my ass or getting fired from a picture,” she continued. “I haven’t made up my mind yet—let’s leave it at that. I’ll call you.” Her expression said: Leave me alone.

Without another word, I handed her the envelope. “I’ll look at them,” she said.

Nightmare in Brentwood

The next day, Sunday morning, Billy Woodfield called me before seven A.M.

“Marilyn’s dead,” he said.

“Come on, Billy,” I murmured into the phone, and hung up on him.

He called right back. “Larry, put on the radio. It’s news. She’s dead.”

Now I was fully awake and I understood that he wasn’t jerking me around. “I’m coming back to L.A.,” I said. “Her house?”

“Yes,” Billy replied.

I just didn’t understand it. Marilyn Monroe was dead at 36. I don’t remember what I thought or discussed with Judi on the drive to Los Angeles, but I remember keeping the radio on all the way home. The early reports were of suicide, but she hadn’t seemed suicidal when I saw her the previous morning. On the other hand, how would I know what “suicidal” looks like? I’d read that she had had such episodes in the past, and that she’d been revived every time.

Back in L.A., I dropped Judi and the baby off, grabbed my bag of cameras, and headed up Santa Monica Boulevard to Brentwood. Adrenaline was coursing through my body. I had to put my emotions on hold so that I could deal with her death professionally. When I arrived at her house, I saw that the front gate was wide open and that there were people all over the lawn. Pat Newcomb, with dark sunglasses on, was being helped into the backseat of a car by a police officer. A second later, Eunice Murray, Marilyn’s housekeeper, emerged and was taken to the same vehicle. She was as white as a sheet. The car drove off.

There were cops everywhere, but nobody was asking for press credentials, which I didn’t have with me anyway. As I walked around, I noticed three or four other photographers and a few newsreel cameramen. That was when I saw a broken window on the right side of the house. Through it, I could see what looked like an empty bedroom, but I could not see the bed. I lifted my Leica and started shooting. Then my eye caught someone who might have been Mickey Rudin, Marilyn’s attorney. He was walking beside another man, who was leading Marilyn’s dog out of the house. Earlier, Marilyn’s body, covered by a coroner’s blanket and strapped to a gurney, had been wheeled out a side door. A little while later, I stopped taking pictures and returned to my car. Then I drove to my studio, reflexively, to develop my film.

Months later, it would be confirmed that Marilyn spoke on the phone with Peter Lawford the evening of her death. Joe DiMaggio Jr. would tell friends that he called her asking for advice about his fiancée. There have long been rumors that Bobby Kennedy had borrowed a car that afternoon and had driven over to see Marilyn, though he was known to be in Northern California that night. When you string these facts together, it didn’t seem like Marilyn was on the brink of taking her life.

To me, she had appeared forlorn that weekend, but certainly not despondent or desperate. And on that Sunday afternoon, as I opened the door to my studio, something caught me entirely off guard. There, on the floor, was an oversize envelope. It was the very one I had given Marilyn. It was now marked to my attention. Eerily, someone had slipped it through the large mail slot in the door.

It took me a while to open it, and when I did, I pulled out a single print. Someone had written on the back: “Send this to Playboy, they might like it.” Years later I was able to confirm it was Marilyn’s handwriting.

The agreement for the purchase of the poolside photos of Marilyn with Playboy was concluded in September 1962, but Hefner, not wanting to exploit the circumstances of Marilyn’s death, decided not to publish them immediately. He waited until the January 1964 issue, which appeared in late November 1963, the week of President Kennedy’s assassination.